Bacalaítos

Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes

• The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
• It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
• Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
• A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
• Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.

Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.

Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes

• It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
• The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
• The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
• The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
• Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.

Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.